Samuel Gompers House - View this location on map The residence from 1902 to 1917 of Samuel Gompers, the pioneering labor leader and long-time president of the American Federation of Labor, during a period of great achievement; born in a London tenement in 1850, Gompers apprenticed in his father's cigarmaking trade, emigrated to America in 1863, and at age 14, while working in New York's East Side, joined the Cigarmakers' Union; as a union organizer, he was instrumental in making the Cigarmakers a national labor model, with a hierarchical leadership exercising centralized control of benefit funds drawn from increased membership dues; in 1877, Gompers was a founder of the union federation which became the AFL in 1886; as its president until 1924, Gompers struggled for higher wages, shorter hours, and better working conditions, and succeeded in making the AFL the strongest spokesman for organized labor in America; his residence, a modest 3-story bay-fronted brick rowhouse typical of the Edwardian era, was also an informal meeting place for labor leaders; built c. 1900 2122 1st Street, NW, Washington , DC Historical

---